MEMPHIS, Tenn. (JTA) — If there’s anything that can bring the Jews of Tennessee together, it would be barbecue.

This past weekend, the 23rd annual Kosher BBQ Contest and Festival drew thousands of Jews from Tennessee and around the country.

It attracted a group of Muslims, too. Turns out they’re not bad at cooking kosher brisket: The Memphis Islamic Center’s team, the "Halal Smokers," won a third-place award for their brisket entry.

The commingling of Jews and Muslims among tables heaped with baked beans, hamburgers and ribs provided a counterpoint to anti-Muslim protests in Murfreesboro, Tenn., and death threats aimed recently at mosques elsewhere in this state.

“This is what America is all about,” Adam Itayem, who manned the Halal Smokers’ booth, said during the event. Itayem is also the owner of Tom’s Bar-B-Q in Memphis.

“People from all over the community feel comfortable coming year after year,” observed Rabbi Joel Finkelstein, the rabbi of Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth, the Orthodox synagogue that organizes the annual event and holds it in its parking lot.

Every May, this Mississippi River city hosts the famed World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, held each year on a Saturday. That contest has an overwhelmingly porcine character.

The synagogue cooked up its contest more than two decades ago so that its Shabbat- and kosher-observant members could get in on the barbecue action.

“It is the only event I know that brings the entire Jewish community together,” said Steve Kaplan, a longtime organizer of the event. He estimated that 3,000 people in all came to the festival.

The kosher barbecue contest has become so popular that attendees from far and wide are trying to copy the Memphis model.

Longtime participant Bruce Downs of Birmingham, Ala., said he has helped launch a similar kosher competition back home, sponsored in part by the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain, whose local branch sells kosher meat.

Warren Binderman, an accountant whose “Grillin Tefillin” team had baked beans bubbling on the grill in Memphis, said he’s trying to start a similar contest in Atlanta.

Marvin Rembo, of Jericho, N.Y., a chemical wholesaler, was sent by his synagogue to scout out the Memphis competition. His mission, Rembo said, is to launch a Long Island-wide kosher barbecue competition next June that will be sanctioned by Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth. The winner will get to compete in Memphis — which can make the uncontested claim, at least for now, of hosting what has quickly evolved into North America’s world series of kosher grilling.

“Eisenhower invaded Europe with less preparation than these guys did to get ready,” Rembo said of the organizers of the Memphis barbecue.

For the crowds this weekend, Sunday was an opportunity not just to tantalize the taste buds, but also to pet goats, shoot some hoops and meet up with friends from around town. Some 45 teams participated in the cooking contest, with each paying a $125 entrance fee in addition to buying all the kosher meat and ingredients they needed. With smoke from the grills hovering over the parking lot, the scene had the air of a Civil War reenactment.

Stuart Lazarov, an anesthesiologist and past president of Anshei Sphard-Beth El Emeth, said sponsors of the event this year included a medical center, a property-management firm, a bank, a casino, law firms and a frozen yogurt store. In a humorous nod, a group of gastrointestinal specialists sponsored a pickle-eating contest.

The grand prize winners, and victors of the ribs competition, were the “Pickering Potchkers.” The best brisket went to “Grills Gone Wild.” The baked beans of the “Cow Towers” took first place in the beans category.

The Memphis Islamic Center’s booth drew a lot of curious Jews who chatted with the cooks about the similarities and differences of the laws governing halal and kosher meat.

Aside from meat, the main draw of the day was a basketball tournament in which 40 teams competed for trophies in three-on-three competition. The power forward for the University of Memphis men’s basketball team, Tariq Black, chatted with fans of his team.

Of the food, Black said, “They have the best salami I have ever tasted.”

An American visitor tours the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow recently. (Martin Rosenberg)

KRAKOW, Poland, Sept. 12 (JTA) — In the heart of what once was the Jewish Kazimierz district sits a photojournalist’s memorial to a once-thriving Jewish Poland. Images of ruined synagogues in the Polish countryside hang against a bare brick backdrop in a spare building that once housed a Jewish-owned factory. The Galicia Jewish Museum was established by British photographer Chris Schwartz as the repository of his photographs of Jewish Poland. More than 3,500 visitors a month passed through the museum this summer. Recently, 40 Israeli youths sat on the lobby floor while Schwartz spoke about learning the lessons of the Holocaust and making them relevant in today’s world. He pointed to the photos on the wall behind him, each depicting Righteous Gentiles from the Krakow area, and spoke about the importance of being ethical in an often evil world. The museum opened two years ago in the city’s restored Jewish Quarter, a small area that is fast becoming one of Poland’s top tourist draws. Each summer it hosts a growing international klezmer festival, and street cafes abound with kreplach and stuffed cabbage — but the synagogue museums, restaurants, Jewish-themed hotels and klezmer groups are largely staffed by non-Jews. Schwartz, 58, first visited Poland in 1981 to cover the rise of the Solidarity trade labor movement that helped topple communism. On subsequent visits he sought out evidence of the country’s Jewish past. In 1991, Schwartz visited Kazimierz and was drawn to the crime-ridden, prostitute-infested, rundown quarter of the medieval city. Below the surface, there was a Jewish past begging to be documented, so he started taking pictures. Eventually Schwartz visited 180 sites throughout Galicia, which extends east from Krakow through southern Poland and once was a place of heavy Jewish settlement. It’s a mission of “discovering traces of Jewish culture,” Schwartz said. He has taken thousands of pictures, of which 150 are displayed at the museum. Schwartz is still taking photographs, and the work can be grueling. “Going from derelict synagogue to derelict synagogue to site of execution” has left him “physically and emotionally wrecked,” he said. He has photographed nearby Auschwitz in brutally cold winter. Why focus on Poland? “You cannot study Judaism without studying Poland,” Schwartz said. “It’s absolutely impossible. This is where the great rabbis developed their most powerful work. Up until the 1880s, 70 percent of the world’s Jews lived in Poland. This was the capital of Jewish life. If all you concentrate on is six terrible years, you have negated 600, 700, 800 years of Jewish life — and Hitler has won.” Schwartz said he also is eager to capture Jewish life in Poland today. When contingents of the Israeli army periodically visit to clean up Jewish cemeteries, he is on hand to photograph their efforts. He also seeks out opportunities to shine a light on neglected episodes in Poland’s recent Jewish past. The museum soon will open an exhibition of the lithographs of Bruno Schulz, whom Schwartz called “the Polish Goya.” Schulz, also an author whose works include “Street of Crocodiles,” was killed by the Nazis in 1942. Schwartz said he’s creating a DVD of his photographs for use in Polish public schools. In the future he hopes to tackle projects in Ukraine, as well. While his photographs delve into the past, Schwartz is convinced the images have a role in the present and future. “You cannot build a life unless you are aware of the past,” he said.